Spring Lake Ranch

Spring Lake Ranch supports and empowers people with mental health and substance abuse issues by providing opportunities to grow and thrive. Spring Lake Ranch uses a unique method of work-centered therapy. At the core of day-to-day life at the Ranch is meaningful work. Residents choose between four crews - Farm, Gardens, Shop, and Woods - and spend their days working side-by-side with their peers and staff members. While Spring Lake Ranch strongly believes in the power of healing through work, they recognize that clients also need robust clinical support in order to process and progress through the complex struggles that accompany mental health and substance abuse. Each client receives wrap-around support through individual therapy, group therapy, psychiatry, medication management, case-management, and substance-abuse programming as well as mentorship from non-clinical staff as part of their team model. The program adds depth of meaning to living in a sustainable way. Daily tasks of feeding and caring for animals, planting seeds and harvesting vegetables, building barns and constructing furniture, or tapping trees and splitting firewood all provide structure and routine through meaningful work. Participation in the Work Program also allows the client to build and foster confidence and self-efficacy by seeing projects through from start to finish while having therapeutic conversations with staff and other residents during the entire process.
”Springs Lake Ranch was founded in 1932 and run by Wayne Sarcka, an immigrant from Finland, and his wife, Elizabeth Man, from Long Island. Wayne had worked in youth camps during World War I with shell-shocked British soldiers in Mesopotamia. Elizabeth, whose brother suffered from schizophrenia, had worked as a social worker in a New York settlement.” The life experience and caring support that they foster through the Work Program is evident in the numerous positive reviews and success stories. Spring Lake Ranch is accredited by CARF and is unlike another treatment center.